Today, the BlackBerry® Partners Fund announced the recipients of the Asia Pacific 2011 BlackBerry® Developer Challenge Recognition Awards at BlackBerry® DevCon Asia in Singapore. Congratulations to these developers for their amazing app contributions – be sure to check out their apps and see their creativity for yourself!

Top performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service – Hangman by Spice Labs

Academic – Most compelling app created by a student or faculty member – MacetTerus by 4id

Award winners took home free passes to BlackBerry DevCon Asia, BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, BlackBerry® smartphones and more. To read the full announcement of the 2011 BlackBerry Developer Challenge by the BlackBerry Partners Fund, go to http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/challenge. Stay tuned for the final round of Recognition Award winners at BlackBerry DevCon Europe!

The winners of the Most Addictive Social App using the BBM™ Social Platform have been announced by the BlackBerry Partners Fund at BlackBerry DevCon Americas. These apps showcase the power of the BBM platform, and how you can use it to add engaging, social elements to BlackBerry® smartphone applications. Congratulations to these developers and thanks to everyone that participated in the challenge! We look forward to seeing more of your BBM connected apps in the future!

In addition, the BlackBerry Partners Fund has recognized the following applications in North America and Latin America to receive a Recognition Award in the categories below. Stay tuned for more updates on Recognition Award winners beyond these regions.

More exciting news arrives today from the BlackBerry Partners Fund™ Developer Challenge, announcing the winners of the Best Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR® app competition for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet! It’s been exciting to see such an array of amazing apps highlighted from all around the world. Thanks to everyone that participated in the competition, and congratulations to these winning developers!

The competition winners take home a share of prizes in a total pool worth over $3 million USD, including BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, a BlackBerry App World™ storefront feature, BlackBerry Alliance memberships and more. Be sure to read the full BlackBerry Partners Fund press release to get all the details.

We hope to see you at an upcoming BlackBerry DevCon where these winners will be recognized!

The BlackBerry Partners Fund has announced the winners of the Most Innovative BlackBerry® WebWorks™ app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® smartphone competition. Developers were required to submit an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and the same (or companion) application for the BlackBerry smartphone, designed for BlackBerry® 6 or higher. The winning entries selected by region are:

Winners in the above categories took home various prizes including some of the following: BlackBerry DEVCON passes, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, BlackBerry smartphones, gift certificates, BlackBerry App World™ Features, and more! Congratulations to these developers – we look forward to recognizing them at BlackBerry DevCon Americas and showcasing their apps at the event.

Stay tuned for upcoming news on the winners of the remaining competition in the BlackBerry Developer Challenge, and best of luck to those participating. If you’re up to the challenge, submit your BBM™ integrated app to the Most Addicting Social App Using the BBM Social Platform by Friday September 23rd at 11:59 PM EST.

Picture the scene: 30 enthusiastic developers, Wi-Fi® and BBM™ experts, press and video crews on hand to capture the very process of turning ideas into BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM) connected apps. Early this August, developers spent two full days entrenched with their cohorts, hacking away at completely new applications that incorporate BBM and adding BBM into existing applications.

Organized into five groups, developers had the chance to work together and discuss their apps with direct access to members of the BBM development and product teams. It was evident to those in attendance that this new event format – open, collaborative – was working out well. Problems that could take hours for a developer to fix on his or her own suddenly took minutes, and a helping hand was always within reach.

Day one consisted of short presentations about the platform and tools, followed by intensive coding sessions – the perfect balance. Day two gave developers the chance to work out more kinks and eventually show off their apps. We were impressed: completion ranged from just the framework of an app to fully-functioning examples. Here’s just a sample of what we saw:

Sharing tasks and status over BBM

Finding friends based on tags or your location

Challenging other BBM contacts through a game

I am excited to see these developers complete their apps and eventually submit them to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront and the 2011 BlackBerry Developer Challenge. The format of this event allowed us to collect feedback and ideas directly from developers, which are of immense value to us as we evolve the BlackBerry development platform, SDKs and tools. We’ll certainly be hosting similar events in the future.

With the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) v6.0 client now officially launched, we’re excited to announce that the BlackBerry® Partners Fund’s 2011 BlackBerry® Developers Challenge has just opened submissions for the ‘Most Addictive Social App Using the BBM Social Platform’ competition*! You can now test the apps you’ve been creating with the BlackBerry® Messenger SDK against the gold release of the BBM v6.0 client and submit them to the competition. If you haven’t created an app yet that integrates BBM features, you still have time to get to work. Submissions for the BBM competition close September 23rd and we’ve compiled a list of resources to help you get started:

Three-part webcast series: ‘Integrating with the BBM Social Platform, One Step at a Time’

The BlackBerry® Partners Fund has just announced the launch of the BlackBerry® Developer Challenge for 2011 and has started accepting submissions for the first Competition! This year, there are three Competitions in total. Their purpose is to recognize, reward and celebrate innovation within the BlackBerry developer community. Similar to last year, each Competition will recognize winners in their respective regions, which will give developers the opportunity to stand out from one another with local content and language support.

The three Competitions are as follows:

Best Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet –now accepting submissions – click here for the Official Rules

Most Addictive social app using the BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) Social Platform –beginning later this summer

New this year, in addition to the Competitions, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will be honouring applications in six categories to receive a Recognition Award. The recipients, which will be recognized regionally, will be selected in the following categories:

Best B2C app developed for a customer by an Agency or ISV

Most useful enterprise application (all technologies)

Best website conversion using the BlackBerry WebWorks platform

Most creative implementation of Super App characteristics

Top Performers – Most innovative use of Payment Service and/or Advertising Service

Academic – Most compelling app created by student or faculty

It’s exciting to note that across the three Competitions, there is approximately $3 million US in prizes available to be won. That’s almost double the value of last year’s prizing. This includes the incentive prizes that will be given out to the first 100 submissions in each Competition. Each incentive prize includes a free BlackBerry smartphone and a feature in the BlackBerry App World™ carousel for 1 week! Please click here for the full terms and conditions.